December 2016 Free Book!
What a privilege is mine this month to present as our December 2016 Free Book, the newly released THE BARON AND THE BEAR, Rupp’s Runts, Haskins’s Miners, and the Season That Changed Basketball Forever by our friend David Kingsley Snell.
THE BARON AND THE BEAR, published by the prestigious University of Nebraska Press, is an incredible true story about the NCAA championship basketball game of 1966. In this championship game, the favored all-white University of Kentucky team was beaten by little known Texas Western College in a game in which TWC fielded only black players. Not only was this game a classic David versus Goliath match, it also broke the unwritten rule that limited the number of black players a college could play on the court at the same time.
Well-told, THE BARON AND THE BEAR is a psychological study of two of the best coaches in NCAA history — Adolph Rupp and Don Haskins — and also a treatise on basketball strategy. Set in the racially tense 1960s, Snell’s book stands as a soaring affirmation of the strength inherent in determination, tough discipline, and team unity.
Author, David Kingsley Snell is no stranger to folks who live in Michigan’s Eastern Upper Peninsula, where he and his wife (Pickford native, Mary Lou Storey) spend their summers. Others may remember him as an on-camera presence for ABC News, especially his work as a on-location correspondent during the Vietnam War.
I can’t think of a better Christmas gift for basketball fans in your life. (I’ve already bought 5 copies for various folks on my Christmas list!)
Our Give-Away edition is a brand-new hardcover. To have your name included in our Wednesday, December 14 drawing, just answer this question. Have you ever played on a basketball team?
Blessings!
Sue
As a teenager at school it was one of the many sports that we played..
It was invigorating to play and each time you put a ball through the hoop what a thrill would race down your spine..
What a wonderful description, Brenda. I was never able to play. In my school, girls were not allowed to participate in sports. I wanted so much to be a distance runner. I used to go out and run on my own during track season. Now I can imagine what it must feel like to play basketball!!
I played it only for school activity and with my brothers at home with the basketball goal nailed to a tree ! We had great fun playing !
Anita, there are few things better for kids than to play with siblings outside!!
Yes. I only got to play two years as it had just started with having scheduled games in the 70’s. Loved the game and still do.
I remember how good you were, Sas!!
Sue, I tried to play as a senior in Pickford. Never playing before it was a real challenge. Although my husband played in high school and both of my kids played in high school. The best part of basketball season or any sport really is watching the kids at the beginning of the year and then watching them towards the end of the year, and seeing the improvements that they have made and how they have learned to actually play the game and learn to love and grow in the game.
I never played but have always loved the game. Was blessed to be able to watch all the home games of the runts during 65-66 when my brother in law was part of the team.
Sue: I was not aware of “The Baron & The Bear” until I read about it in the December 2017/January 2018 edition of Kentucky Monthly Magazine. My cousin, Louie Dampier, Number 10 of Rupp’ Runts, appears on the front cover. Louie is a great guy, a two-time All American in basketball; and, a two-time All Academic at the University of Kentucky. Since, at 6 months past Age 80, I also recently published a book on basketball, titled “Basketball Beginnings in the Commonwealth of Kentucky-1900’s – 1950’s, featuring the game’s beginnings from YMCA’s into high schools of Kentucky, I would love to meet David Kingsley Snell, to share ideas, etc. My book is available at $21.95.